1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to network device management and more particularly to displaying network indicators in a window title bar.
2. Description of the Related Art
Network management software provides network administrators a way of tracking the various characteristics of network devices, such as switches, routers, and the like, in a data communication network. Examples of these characteristics are the CPU utilization, memory utilization, unused ports, and number of events on devices in a network. Network management software, such as Brocade Network Advisor by Brocade Communication Systems, Inc., generally has a graphic user interface (GUI) that allows a network administrator to monitor numerous types of network characteristics in a single display. Each characteristic may be monitored in its own individual window called a widget. However, because there are so many types of network characteristics to monitor it is often necessary for the network administrator to minimize some of the widgets. When minimized, none of the network information being tracked by a particular widget may be seen in the GUI by an administrator. Instead, only the widget's title bar is displayed, which simply tells a network administrator which type of characteristic is being tracked by the widget. If, for example, the minimized widget monitors the memory utilization of devices in the network, and a monitored network device suddenly reaches its maximum memory utilization, a network administrator has no way of knowing that situations exists. Therefore, a method and system is needed to alert a network administrator.